Years later, maybe he would have remembered that night in the bleeding cold when they sat with each other in the Central Park. The slow burn of hearts could not melt the snow at all, but he, at that time, thought it could.

He sat on the bench. Alone or with someone else, he could not remember (he could, as it turned out that he was only too fearful to admit it). The night solemnly announced its arrival with the wind’s haunting howls. The night was cold. It was deep December, just before Christmas, and unsurprisingly the wind was cutting air into threads. The streetlights quivered slightly under the heavy snow. Even a busy metropolitan like Manhattan froze in the winter.

If there was a choice, or anything of any kind were to happen, I would have said it in the Central Park while sitting on the bench. Now in an airplane ready for takeoff, any regret seemed pointlessly hilarious.

Many dreams would come true if I did not see the clock tower on the beach when I was five.

The family was on holiday, supposed to be merry to finally have some rest. His parents took him to a beach, somewhere that was not at all sunny and hot like near the equator, but cool and jagged (it was Iceland). His parents were the typical worn-out middle-class type, who were still struggling in their middle age crisis in work or family or any other field they were specialists in. But one thing made them different. They chose Iceland for a holiday. Reykjavík, probably, a place he could never pronounce right. It was summer, at least in his memories; he later deduced that it couldn’t possibly be in the winter, or the Scandinavian weather would be unbearable as almost the entire day would be canopied in darkness of the night.

The beach, for five-year-old him, was just barely a beach. No golden, hot sand; no crawling crabs that could be toyed with; no blue waves with white rims splashing onto his bare feet. Only dark, grey, sharp rocks, piercing the shore, and the colorless, infinite sea that merges with the sky at the horizon. A place where Björk would choose to shoot her music videos; the characteristic Icelandic sealines were to be felt in her voice.

But now whenever he has heard Jóga, his heart would still ache in an unspeakable pain. That dark immense danger was still lingering somewhere in his heart.

Love was a power. He could not believe he had to learn it first; to learn how to love. But when faced with the cool Icelandic wind from the sea, he could only sigh and slouch a bit on the bench in Central Park. His disappointed sighs turned into a patch of whiteness.

The flight attendee announced the takeoff with a calm and collected voice, so calm that it seemed mechanical. I had got my window seat. Through the rounded rims of thick layers of glass, I could see the grey and smothered sky. Raindrops slowly dropping onto the window, leaving trails of transparent morphing of the scenery. The engines were not humming in the slightest of notion. Everything resided in silence. Let the memory take me back to the sealines of Iceland once again—I would have known.

The Icelandic wind was not as ruthless as in the Central Park, at least in his memories. They sat together on that bench, holding hands…The whole city seemed to have held a breath for them when they were to feel, at the time, the sightliest of sound smothered under the snow. But Iceland—oh Iceland—was, is, and will be different. Back in his childhood, on the rocky beaches of that island located so north that northern lights could be seen, he was to see it the first and last time.

The plane hummed; a faint vibration could be felt. How could this huge, heavy piece of metal be launched into the sky without falling like a raindrop?

They just had lunch, some normal Icelandic dish, he supposed, with fish and vegetables. They ambled to the beach, where his parents left to find something that he could not remember. He sat alone on one of the million rocks on the seashore and stared blankly into the sea. It was just a line. But then it was not. Something of an alien ship slowly closed in, growing larger and larger, emerging from where the sea and sky met. Now he would think he was dreaming, or he has gone mad, but his younger self was more engaged than disbelieved. He jumped up and climbed down the rocky shore, with both hands and feet, hopping between the grey shapes like a frog. He finally touched the water, after days in Iceland. And in his memory, the spaceship was much closer when he reached where the waves were brushing gently on the stones, but not as tall as he thought it was, as if part of it was submerged beneath the ocean.

He finally saw it, a black metal pillar with the base partially submerged under the water to make sure the clock face leveled with him. The metal minute and hour hands were turning slowly, stirring the fabric of spacetime. A patch of whiteness was on the metal rim, like a dead bird. His held breath was released into the nameless wind from the sea.

The whiteness suddenly began to move and jumped down elegantly, opening its wings, gliding in the gentle wind towards him. He froze in place.

“Hello!” The white figure spoke. The dark hair was glimmering under the soft sunlight.

He shrugged. “Mom said I shouldn’t talk to strangers.” He paused, and continued, “But you are a bird, not a stranger.”

The white bird laughed slightly. Maybe it was not a bird, or how could a bird talk? But it just flew to me. Also, if it was a bird, it was a very big one, and one with very white feathers.

“You are not Icelandic. And you are a child. Where are you from?”

“I…I came from my home. We have lots and lots of friends there. My mom and dad are also from my home, and I also have a dog…”

The bird was bewildered, he remembered; if he was correct, he must have said something really stupid, or the white bird didn’t understand English.

“You will remember me, and you will remember this conversation as childhood memories. You are just five. You don’t quite understand my Greek accent. But you will think of me when you, in the far future, sit in the Central Park. You will regret things, not for things you have done, but for things you haven’t done.

“I am not a bird, but the winds are turning me into one. I can fly, as feathers slowly grow out of my pale skin, but no, I am not a bird, yet. I know to you I am talking to myself, mumbling something you don’t understand now but will understand in the future. The snow will fall in Central Park, and the symphonies playing in the air will not lie, as the metropolitan landscape that I couldn’t possibly have seen holds a breath for you.

“There are ghosts around, ones lingering for love, for hope, for revenge, but if you regret, you won’t even linger. The wind will blow you away.”

I turned my head from the airplane window, tilting towards the white ceiling. It was terrible, as the white bird was right, I didn’t remember anything else of that trip except the shores, the black clock tower, and the white bird’s words. I could recite them in my brain whenever I wanted, even though it was thirty years after it had said them. And more tragically, just like what the white bird said, I didn’t do it. Suddenly the destination of the airplane wasn’t important anymore.

The lady sitting beside me was growing impatient for some reason. I asked her why in between her complaints, and she said that the flight had been delayed due to the weather. When I asked for how long, she simply shook her head and said,

“God knows how long? Maybe a minute or a million years, what’s the difference?”

After that holiday in Iceland, every time I saw snowfall I thought of the white bird. Its feathers, its wings, and its words. Maybe I tried to talk to my parents, but they probably just patted me on my head and said that I have got a vivid imagination, and told me I should become a writer, or something. And I surely did, not a writer in writing words, but in lies that I fabricated for myself to ease the regret.

I started to examine the lady sat on my right. She wore a white, immaculate hat shaped like a wing even inside the plane, and her sunglasses were reflecting the surroundings. A pearl earring accompanied by her white gloves made her look enigmatic and fashionable. She was listening to something. Lucky? Listening to that before a flight taking off was the unluckiest choice I could think of.

The whiteness of her coat brought me back to Central Park, the place the white bird spoke of, again and again in my memories. We finally finished touring that December, and the last stop was New York. I was never too fond of the city, as I regarded it as too artificial and noisy. Especially the Central Park, a lone oasis in the metal desert, so artificial as if the people couldn’t stand the iron structures and had to construct something vaguely resembling nature.

He once hated the Central Park, but after the incident, the hate faded. Only the infinite, bottomless hole of emptiness in the heart remained. Even though every word of the white bird’s speech was understood, he still couldn’t evade his future.

I held his hand as we walked silently in the Central Park. The snow was pouring down, and the whiteness under our feet crackled. It was quite cold, as my exposed skin was getting cool. The snowflakes glided gracefully in the wind. I turned to look at him, and his dark hair were wetted by the molten snow. The strands of hair flowed down on the sides of his profile quite elegantly. He was walking absent-mindedly, staring at the trees around us, as I could hear the sighs escaping him. Why was he sighing? Maybe it was the relief that New York was our last stop and the touring finally ended. But the sighs were a mingle of sadness and…and a weird sense of futility. He started to talk about something that was very confusing. He told me, while gripping my hand harder, that once when he was five, he went to Iceland. He said he saw the landscapes in Björk’s music, and he, for the first time in his life, saw the mingling of the sky and the sea. He said a huge dark clock tower approached him, and a white bird on the tower said something, something about he would regret his time in the Central Park.

He said it was twenty years ago, but he still managed to recite the words of the white bird exactly, without any mistakes or forgetfulness. I should have doubted him, but I knew him for too well that he would never lie to me.

I turned yet again to the airplane’s window. The flight still hadn’t taken off, and the rain was not slowing down. It was a consistent downpour, not getting more intense nor milder, just a universal sigh with teardrops of the sky. Before I could realize, tears were gliding down my cheeks. The lady beside me handed me a piece of white tissue.

“Do not weep. Delays happen. Good holidays end, and good times end, too. We cry for our destination, and we cry for the reason why we are to go to that destination. But in the end, we still walk out of the plane with the earth of our destination—wherever that is—under our feet.”

I sat with him on the bench. Our hands were still locked, but I could feel his fingertips getting colder. The night canopied the tall buildings beside us. The warm streetlights were the backdrops of the flying snow. I thought of his words, the white bird, and the clock tower. What are you going to say that you regretted not saying? I urged him to go on. But he remained silent. His hands went from mine to his face, covering his expression in an aching posture. I didn’t know if he was crying or not, but it looked painful…He looked like what a panic attack felt like. The symphonies composed between our hands were released into the Christmas snow, and the whole city held a breath for us, listening attentively to the dancing notes. I slowly pulled him into an embrace. His hands were off his face and his arms circled me.

He remained silent. I also remained silent. He didn’t say it. I didn’t know what he was to say, but I knew, achingly aware, that just like how the white bird predicted, he was going to regret not saying it until the last second of his life.

Of course, he didn’t say it. Just like his time in Iceland, and every time in his life at every place, he couldn’t jump out of the circle. He has been silent for years and years, and he let it slip away just like every other time. At that Icelandic shore, between the rocks that had been washed millions of times by the gentle waves, he was so alone. Just like how he was now.

The plane finally broke the silence with the roaring of the engines. The lady beside me sighed with relief. She smiled a little to me, as if saying look, we can finally fly. I turned away from her to the window again, swallowing everything I just thought of, every detail of the Icelandic shores, of Central Park, of the white bird, and of the clock tower.

The airplane started to accelerate, as the scene outside the window morphed into horizontal strips of color. I was pushed into the seat as the plane slowly tilted to break into the sky. It was intense for some minutes, and silence strike. An odd silence that replaced the noise. A sheer drop in the sky. Everything flew upwards. The raindrops still resided on the window.

When you fell so fast in the sky with the rain, at some point the raindrops beside you would freeze—not into ice, but freeze in motion and time, as they would have fallen with the same velocity. They would remain static to you, while you and the rain continued to rush toward the ground.

The metal enclosure opened up and everything fractured. I escaped my seat, but everyone around me were circled away with what remained of a plane. Except the white lady: she seemed to have opened her wings and flew away.

I sighed. The raindrops were beside me, static and unmoving. I swayed between, and down below I saw again the Icelandic shores, the jagged beach, and the waves. I was falling into Central Park, between the skyscrapers that seemed like needles now, crashing down with the Christmas snow, with the December wind, down to the exact moment on that bench.